TILLAGE AND TILTH

OBJECTIVES OF TILLAGE – CHARACTERISTICS OF IDEAL SEED BED – EFFECT

OF TILLAGE ON SOIL PROPERTIES – PORE SPACE, TEXTURE, STRUCTURE,
BULK DENSITY AND COLOUR OF THE SOIL
Tillage is as old as agriculture.
Tillage derived from Anglo-saxan word tilian and teolian meaning , to plough and prepare soil for seed to sow, to
cultivate and to raise crops.
Pietro de crescenzi - Father of Agronomy
Jethro Tull – Father of tillage
Inventions- Seed drill and horse-drawn hoe
Book- Horse hoeing husbandry
After the harvest of crop the soil becomes hard and compact because of:
1. Beating action of rain drops.
2. Irrigation and subsequent drying
3. Movement of implements and labourers.
TILLAGE: It is the physical manipulation of soil with tools and implements to result in good tilth for better
germination and subsequent growth of crops.
a) Primary tillage
b) Secondary tillage
TILTH: It is the physical condition of soil resulting from tillage.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD TILTH

• 1. A soil should be mellow, friable, crumbly and adequately aerated.

• 2. A soil in good tilth is porous. Capillary and non-capillary pores are equal.
This facilitates free movement of air and water.
• i. Higher percent of larger aggregates (more than 5 mm in diameter) are
necessary for irrigated agriculture, while higher percentage of smaller
aggregates (1 to 2 mm diameter) are desirable for dry land agriculture.
• ii. Tilth can be coarse or fine. For sandy soils fine kind of tilth is required
and for heavy black soils rough cloddy conditions or coarse tilth is enough.
Objectives of Tillage:
1. To produce a satisfactory seed bed for good germination and good crop growth.
2. To make the soil loose and porous.
3. To aerate the soil
4. To control weeds (For perennial weeds)
5. To remove the stubbles. (that may harbour pests)
6. To expose the soil inhabiting pathogens and insect pests to sun and kill them.
7. To break hard pans in the soil
8. For deep tillage and inversion of soil
9. For incorporating bulky organic manures
10. To increase infiltration rate
Soil structure: The arrangement of primary particles and their aggregates in to a certain definite pattern is called
soil structure.
The primary particles (sand, silt and clay) do not exist as such but are bound together with varying degrees of
tenacity in to larger units or aggregates usually termed as secondary particles.
Peds: Natural aggregates of soil
Clod: Coherent mass of soil broken down into any shape by artificial means such as tillage
Type of soil structure:
Plate like: The horizontal dimensions are much more developed than the vertical axis resulting in to flattened like appearance to
peds.
a) Platy- when the units are thick
b) Laminar- when the units are thin
Prism like: The vertical axis is more developed than others
c) Columnar- when the top of such ped is rounded
d) Prismatic- when the top of such ped are still plane
Block like-: All the three dimensions are about the same size and the peds are cube like with flat or rounded faces
Spheroidal: All the axes are developed equally with the same length, curved and irregular faces
e) Granular: Simply the aggregates of this type of structure are usually termed as granular
f) Crumb: When the granules are specially porous
 Influence/Effects of Tillage on soil physical properties:
1. Soil Structure:
• Arrangements of soil particles with crumbly and granular nature is considered good.
• Best size of soil aggregate for good growth of crop is (1-5mm) .
• smaller aggregates may clog soil pores and larger ones may have large pore space.
• Tillage improves soil structure when done at optimum soil moisture level.
• Tilling a soil when it is too wet spoils the structure. Ploughing a dry soil is difficult and will not help in
improving structure.

2. Soil texture (non-dynamic): Relative proportion of different soil particles namely sand, silt and clay.
Texture is an important soil characteristic because it will partly determine water intake rates, water storage in the
soil, the ease of soil tillage operation and combinedly influence the soil fertility.
As for example, a course sandy soil is easy to till but dries rapidly where as in case of high clay soil it is difficult
to till but permits very little room for flow of water
Soil textural classes: a) Clay textural classes: At least 40% clay
b) silt textural class: 80% silt
c) sand textural classes: 85% sand
Particle size:
Coarse sand - 2.0 - 0.2mm.
Fine sand - 0.2 - 0.02mm.
Silt - 0.02 - 0.002mm.
Clay – less then 0.002mm
Tillage has no effect on soil texture.
3. Pore space: When a field is ploughed the soil particles are loosely arranged and pore space is increased. When
the soil is in good tilth the capillary and non capillary pores would be roughly equal. This facilitates free movement of
air and moisture in soil.
4. Bulk Density: (B.D) Mass per unit volume of a dry soil (volume of soild and pore space)
Unit: gm/cc
When the soil is loosened, the soil volume increase without any affect on weight. BD of Clay soils is low (1.1 to 1.3 gm/cc) and that
of sandy soils is high (1.7 gm/cc) and Bulk density of tilled soil is less than that of untilled soil.
Particle density is always more than BD.
5. Particle density: The weight per unit volume of the soild portion of soil is called particle density
Termed as true density
Unit: gm/cc
PD is constant because it only depends on inorganic or mineral matter
Range: 2.5 to 2.6
Particle density is not altered by tillage.

6. Soil Colour: Organic matter is mainly responsible for the dark brown to dark grey colour of the soil. Tillage
increases oxidation and decomposition of organic matter resulting in fading of colour.

7. Soil water: Tillage improves soil water in different ways. It increases rate of infiltration, water holding capacity .

8. Soil temperature: Tillage creates soil temperature optimum for seed germination and seedling establishment .
Tillage loosens soil surface resulting in heat capacity.